A November 12 editorial appearing in Vermont’s Rutland Herald titled “A Turning Point” reveals in fineness the blind cult of statism; the idea that government, by using its power of violent coercion, is somehow capable of exercising a kind of noble compassion.

In lambasting “conservatives” (always the manner in which dogmatic leftists paint with a broad brush anyone who may even question the notion of government being anything but mankind’s greatest invention), the piece states:

“For 30 years or more, they have seen history going in their direction, even if the conservative revolution, as it has been styled, never achieved completion. This has been a span of history dominated by the idea that government was an impediment to progress and an enemy of freedom.”

Had any of this actually been the case – to wit, that “conservatives” had truly embraced the aforestated concept, likely government today would either be skeletal, or entirely non-existent. The government-worshippers would’ve all been discredited and discarded generations ago.

The editorial continues: “And yet the decades prior to the Reagan revolution were shaped by another view – that government had a vital role to play in guaranteeing security from attack by our enemies abroad and from economic catastrophe at home.”

Note immediately the ignorance and arrogance expressed by this collectivistic buffoon. Sorry, the U.S. government’s enemies are not necessarily my enemies, so don’t try dragging me under that umbrella with you, Mr. Statist. If the government you love like a religion hadn’t spent over the last 100 years meddling violently (and government only exists by use of violence) with people in foreign lands, Americans would have little to fear in terms of war or terrorism. And as for economic catastrophe? Explain to me how governmental interventionism, distortion of markets, baseless debt-driven fiat currency issued by the Federal Reserve, and heavy-handed taxation have helped anyone except politicians and others who produce nothing – much less anything of actual value.

It gets even better: “Roosevelt [Franklin D., not Teddy] saw both his great programs as essential in protecting freedom – his program to attack the Depression and his program to win World War II. It was his insight that no one can be free who lacks a job, a meal, a house, or good health.”

I could pull this apart in a thousand different ways while standing on my head, but let’s keep it simple: The Depression happened because the Federal Reserve wanted it to. When certain independent banks – yes, there were still some in those days – balked at becoming part of the Fed’s sinister system, they brought the walls down as a little punitive incentive to get all dissenters in line. As for WW2, it was only after FDR deliberately started a stell-trade war with the Japanese and insisted on shipping American arms to England at taxpayer expense that America got involved. Had he not been such a provocateur, no Americans would have died in or been forced to pay for that war. American ships and lives would’ve never been attacked. And further, how was “freedom” ever “protected” by a military draft, wage withholding (introduced in 1943 as a “voluntary” – and supposedly temporary — wage tax), rationing, etc.? And, I further fail to understand the logic behind the idea that forcing others at gunpoint to subsidize someone’s meals, house, and health is “essential in protecting freedom.” It sounds like one of the best ways, rather, to rationalize taking any and all freedom away. More of the same irrational bunk appears later in the piece: “Some of Roosevelt’s greatest accomplishments had to do with protecting Americans from the ravages of unchecked capitalism. He brought the nation’s banks under greater regulation. He established a system to protect farm income. He created Social Security for the elderly.”

Capitalism evil. The “nation’s” banks under tighter rules than the Fed. Farm subsidies. The SS Ponzi scheme first developed in Otto von Bismarck’s Prussia. Yeah, just great stuff.

This continues: “Social Security requires a government bureaucracy – ‘big government’ – but few would argue that establishing a basic level of economic security for the elderly does not secure freedom for them and their families.”

I guess I’m one of those few, pal. What this scam fosters is dependency on one end, and slavery on the other. There is no “freedom” being secured. That’s an illusion all in your Marxist mind, Mr. Statist.

The piece continues in the same collectivist vein – that housing, education (read “indoctrination”), food, health care, and a job are all somehow “rights” that must be payed for by others. This dimwit actually hails federal food stamps and housing (some of the worst slums around, by the way), Medicare and Medicaid as huge successes of government, when in truth they have all been miserably bureaucratized failures that have only succeeded in destroying individual liberty.

Towards the end, the author invokes a quote from FDR, the socialist: “In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people.”

If FDR can hear me, I’m an individualist all the way, 100% And the only way you can drag me down with your deluded notion of there being a “nation” or “one people” – both fictitious mental concepts at best – is at gunpoint.

And that kind of a system has nothing at all to do with freedom. Thus, neither does anything government does.